EN
In the works by Adalbert Stifter love is constantly present, yet the author clearly separates it from sensual passion, describing the latter as moral suicide - hence the writer’s obsessive tendency to construct love relationships in which partners successfully put any longing for erotic fulfilment aside. In his favourite story „Die Mappe meines Urgroßvaters“ Stifter clearly shows how abstaining from sexual closeness determines the lives of the protagonists. Sexual abstinence here supports the protagonists’ striving to clear themselves of guilt ensuing from succumbing to passions. It is a sort of atonement thanks to which they surmount their egoism, which closes them in a cramped world of their own obsessive desires. Finally, thanks to abstention from sexual closeness the protagonists arrive at spiritual maturity and find the true meaning of the feeling that connects them and the sense of mutual affinity.